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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Boundaries of consciousness, consciousness of boundaries?
| Panel |
34. Post-apartheid: ethnographies of the South African transition
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| Paper ID | 593 |
| Author(s) |
Kriel, Inge
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| Paper |
View paper (PDF)
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| Abstract | South Africa has a sad history of racially-based government interventions in the movement and settlement patterns of its own people and those from other countries in the region, with detrimental effects on the well-being of most of its population. The abolition of apartheid caused the perception that people would be able to escape poverty by moving to greener pastures. But what had – and what had not – changed in migration patterns, both internally and in the southern African region, since the end of apartheid? This question is addressed from the perspective of a community considerably affected by the in-migration of ‘non-members’ and the out-migration of ‘members’. As a private owner of land that contains some of the world’s richest deposits of platinum, chrome, and granite, the Royal Bafokeng Nation has become a formidable corporate entity whose financial reach extends far beyond most companies’ and states’ in Africa. Given the real and perceived economic privileges available to Bafokeng people, the boundaries of membership in the Nation take on additional salience. The question is whether individuals and groups, living within the territory of the Royal Bafokeng Nation, draw and maintain boundaries, and if so, when and how.
This paper discusses the profile and intentions of internal and cross-border migrants currently resident in one of the Bafokeng villages. It also highlights the agency of individuals and groups to adopt terms of their own definition, rather than the imposing structure of the new South African nationalism, as the basis for their incorporation into the social landscape of post-apartheid South Africa.
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